December 24, 2011

Perry’s campaign told state election officials it had submitted 11,911 signatures, and Gingrich’s campaign said it submitted 11,050 signatures. State party officials spent Friday night validating the signatures.

I would add that Larry Sabato predicts that the VA GOP will let the signature provision slide. The bigger question to me is, if one can't even qualify to run in a state primary, why the hell would i vote for you to run the country?

I think that this says something about these candidates, and it isn't good.

Keep in mind that they are campaigning to run a government of several million people, with a million or so guns, multi-trillion dollar budget, etc. And, that takes some managerial ability. This failure shows that these candidates may be a bit weak there.

Probably the second to last thing that this country needs right now is for the next President to be a lousy administrator (the last thing is for the present occupant of that office be reelected). Obama has shown us what happens when the President has not knowledge, or in his case, interest, in what the rest of his Administration is doing. We have run-away departments - Fast and Furious and New Black Panthers in Justice, Energy squandering hundreds of billions to political cronies, EPA outlawing coal plants and CO2 emissions, etc.

If the President doesn't show leadership and management of his government, bureaucrats, both political and career, are going to take that as a green light to do exactly as they wish, at the taxpayers' expense. Ok, they are going to try to do so regardless - the question is the extent that they get away with it.

I think Virginia's rule is generally a good one. If you are running for President, possessing the organization and administrative ability to get 10K signatures for ballot eligibility seems to be a pretty low bar to show that you have those talents. And establish you have the actual support out there.

Double bad on Newt. He has LIVED in Virginia for 30 years as a Beltway Bandit. Has had dozens of booksignings and "Newt speeches" in Virginia and in DC where VA residents mingle in, since the ballot opened.

Kinda laughable that you bring up using taxpayer money to validate recall signatures in Wisconsin. I would imagine that the amount of tax dollars involved in such a validation effort would be a drop in the bucket compared to the amount being billed to the taxpayers of Wisconsin for the entire recall process! If the taxpayers are willing to pay for this, then they shouldn't complain about paying to ensure the process is fair.

As a Virginian, I'm a bit perturbed by all this, but that's the extent of it.

The Virginia GOP has had this process in place for decades, and it's never been a problem before. This reflects very poorly on the non-qualifing candidates, who have showed an amazing lack of organizational skill. Especially Newt, who should know better, since he's a Virginia resident! Blaming the process is stupid.

And kudos to the Virginia GOP for running this process straight and true. You can't say they're not playing by the rules, even though they're catching holy hell about it.

The money isn't coming in so Gingrich knows he is toast. But running for Pres will up his book sales. No time to man up - he cries "wah" blames "the broken system". Next year his book on the environment comes out with a key chapter on AGW, ugh. Next year the R's take over the Senate - they better get it right this time. Romney as Pres won't stand in the way.